Hello dear friends and family:
I’m writing with an update on our ethnographic documentary workshop held this past October in the Ecuadorian coast (Manabí). It went great! Take a look at some pictures below of our students, mentors, instructors and our teachers—the mothers and grandmothers of our students who cooked traditional recipes for our videos.
We really exceded our expectations considering we held two simultaneous workshops (one on digital video/storytelling and another one on food ethnography), plus the shooting of three short films in exactly one week!
This only happened thanks to the hard work of two amazing mentors (the former students of our ethnographic food & film workshops in Bahía de Caráquez), Ana Maya and Esteban Cedeño. Special thanks and a shout out to my co-instructor Alejandra Zambrano for enduring a road-trip all the way from Quito to Calceta while ~30 weeks pregnant, and to her partner Mateo Martínez for his support. Their baby Zoé was the youngest of our workshop participants 👶
Very special thanks to our hosts in Calceta, Alexandra Cusme and Rafael Estrada, two renowned amorfineros (oral tradition folk poets) who made our stay not feel as work but as a mini vacation in paradise—eating traditional food cooked in clay pots and wood-fire, sleeping in ecological bamboo houses, bathing in warm river water and getting up early to a loud symphony of birds (check out their place at Casa Cultural Experimental La Montuvia).
A beautiful highlight of this workshop were the amorfinos (traditional oral verses) dedicated to food that our students created with inspiration from Ale and Rafa (our hosts), and which will be part of the videos! It was also quite an experience to be able to screen Raspando Coco and other documentaries created by our alumni, as inspiration for this new generation of ethnographers and filmmakers.
We are currently working on editing the videos featuring three traditional recipes and will be releasing them in late January: el rompope (eggnog), el bollo and la tonga. Stay tuned!
I also want to share how proud and grateful I am to realize that by this three-year anniversary of Raspando Coco’s release in 2018, faculty and students at 13 colleges and universities in the United States have requested to add this film to their library collections!
Raspando Coco is now available through the following University libraries: Arizona State University, Knox College, UC Berkeley, Culinary Institute of America, University of Illinois, University of Virginia, University of Notre Dame, Stetson University, Wichita State University, Wisconsin Lutheran College, Tufts University, and Stanford High School. This list does not include more than a dozen one-time screenings and guest talks we have been invited to at other institutions throughout the US, Asia and Latin America. I am so grateful.
It’s obvious that my friends and colleagues were behind many of these requests and referrals, which reminds me of a Cuban adagio I love “quien tiene un amigo, tiene un central” (“to have a friend is to have a sugar mill”)
Thank you for your friendship and continued support. Happy holidays!
Pilar
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